We Need to Talk About Inflation: 14 Urgent Lessons from the Last 2,000 Years

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST SUMMER BOOKS OF 2023: MONEY AND BEST SUMMER BOOKS OF 2023: ECONOMICSHistorically informed and lucid.Martin Wolf, Financial TimesBrilliantly clear and concise.Juliet Samuel, Times (UK)Excellent and readable.Larry Elliot, The GuardianA mythbusting explanation of inflation, the desperate gullibility of central bankers and finance ministersand our abject failure to learn from historyFrom investors and monetary authorities to governments and policy makers, almost everyone had assumed inflation was dead and buried. But now people the world over are confronting a poisonous new economic reality and, with it, the prospect of vast and increasing wealth inequality.How have we arrived in this situation? And what, if anything, can we do about it?Celebrated economist Stephen D. Kingone of the few to warn ahead of time about the latest inflationary upheavalidentifies key lessons from the history of inflation that policy makers chose not to heed. From ancient Rome through the American Civil War and up to the asset bubbles of today, inflation stems from policy error, sovereign greed, and a collective loss of faith in currencies.We Need to Talk About Inflation cuts through centuries of bad judgment and misunderstanding, offering a means to intervene nowso we can begin to tackle the political and social upheaval unleashed by inflation.